


Joly Most Of All

by Eglantine



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Coming Out, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Sleeping around, implied sex (not explicit), just nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5464139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eglantine/pseuds/Eglantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bossuet slept with everyone, but Joly most of all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Joly Most Of All

1.  
In the future, he wonders, will he know how to describe this feeling, the way it feels to be seventeen years old and an orphan and increasingly penniless and in _Paris?_

It feels like— it feels like— the feeling of cobblestones through shoe soles, the clattering sound of a cabriolet only in your heart and your head— no—

It feels like—

It feels like Grantaire’s unshaven cheeks, and the taste of wine so strong on his lips, and the bright scarlet color Grantaire burns when Lesgle jerks away in surprise. ‘

“You’re always quoting Greeks—” Grantaire mutters, his voice hoarse with embarrassment.

“No,” Lesgle says. “No, no. I just didn’t— know.” 

“That I…”

“That… I?”

It feels like that.

2.  
“My ears are still ringing,” Lesgle says. “I always imagined that boxing practice involved much less— getting hit.”

“Getting hit encourages you to learn how to not get hit,” Bahorel says cheerfully.

“Oddly, I didn’t need much encouragement on that front in the first place,” Lesgle replies.

“Oh, stop sulking,” Bahorel says. “What, do you want me to kiss it better?”

Lesgle considers this. “Well, it would take my mind off, certainly.” 

3.  
“Stop, stop, please stop—”

Both of Feuilly’s hands are pressed to his face and he’s deep in that phase of helpless laughter where every breath is a wheezy gasp and his ribs literally ache. He curls up more tightly to try and muffle his laughter into his pillow. “The walls are so thin, we’re going to wake everyone—”

“ _We?_ ” Lesgle hisses in an indignant whisper. “It’s you who is making an ungodly racket. I am lying here quietly, like a respectable young man.”

“Ahh… I can’t breathe, you’ve killed me…” Feuilly rolls over and presses his lips against Bossuet’s, but midway through, he snorts out another laugh and has to turn away. “Ahaha… sorry… though it’s no less than you deserve.”

4.  
“Don’t get up, don’t get up.” Lesgle flaps his hand towards the bed and Combeferre, with a sigh equal parts exasperated and amused, lays back down, his hands folded behind his head, staring myopically up at the ceiling.

“I definitely heard them fall this way,” Lesgle says. “And I’m going to find them.”

“I suppose it’s what I get for taking off my spectacles with you anywhere in the vicinity,” Combeferre says. He wouldn’t admit that he doesn’t mind Lesgle’s insistence that he not try looking— he finds stumbling around a blurred room discomfiting. He makes a halfhearted effort to smooth out the tangled sheets, then squints back up at the ceiling. Suddenly, with a thump, Lesgle is there beside him.

“I can’t think where they’ve gone,” he says, pushing the spectacles up his nose. “But listen, suppose I lead you around everywhere you go and describe everything for you instead?”

“Hmm,” Combeferre plucks the spectacles off and lifts the sheet for Lesgle to climb back underneath. “I don’t know, blindness might be preferable.”

5.  
“If you write a poem about this…”

Prouvaire laughs. “I don’t write poems about _everything_ I do, you know.”

“Every _one_ you do, don’t you mean.”

6.  
“You are taking up the _entire_ bed.”

“That is patently untrue,” Courfeyrac says. “For you are not on the floor. You are on the bed. Ergo, there is some area of the bed which you are occupying and I am not.”

“A technicality,” Lesgle replies, shaking his head. “This is no land worth living on. A man cannot plant crops, raise a family all crammed away in this inhospitable corner. I may appear to exist within the borders of the bed, but in truth, I have had to retreat halfway up the wall. And don’t even start me on the blankets. The unjust allocation of resources in this republic is not to be borne. There is no benefit to we of the borderlands at all.” 

“Now you will wound my pride,” Courfeyrac says, shifting over just a little. “No benefit at _all_?”

“—true, I spoke in haste.”

7.  
“Do you never consider the fact that I am in love with you?” Bossuet groans melodramatically. He writhes a little on the bed, for effect. Woefully.

“No,” Joly says, frowning at the mirror and trying to make the front of his hair lie flat. “Should I?”

“Nearly thirty… a poor orphan with no family… no hint at all of a proposal…”

(And this is what it feels like, nearly thirty, poorer than ever, still and forever in Paris: like the whispering linen sound of Joly tying his cravat, like the dust motes that float in the morning sun as it comes through the window in a sharp slant cut out by the building next door, like the ink and tobacco stains on his fingers, like the precise way Joly always says _à bientôt_ as he pats his pocket to be certain of his key and goes out.)


End file.
